You Can’t Take It With You
Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s You Can’t Take It With You first premiered on Broadway in late 1936, midway through FDR’s first term in office and still the Great Depression. The subject of the title – the It you …
2014
In Memoriam Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos
I should kick myself now for not having gone backstage to say hello...you can lose people from sheer timidity, after all. And agents aren't supposed to be timid.
Last December, I found myself in Los Angeles. The trip was a vain attempt to escape the cold. And it would ultimately yield nothing but tooth-chattering selfies at deserted beaches all the way down the coast. But I did have the opportunity to hear iconic Spanish conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Rimsky-Korsakoff"s Scheherazade and an early Haydn symphony. Both performances were classic, warmhearted Frühbeck in his comfort zone. I wrote-up the concert at the time, and a review can be found here. But I had no idea this would be Frühbeck's last week with the Philharmonic, nor that six months later he would be dead from cancer at eighty-one. He did seem a bit frail and tired, so I had thought better than to go backstage and disturb him. But now he's gone, of course...
riverrun runs wild in Brooklyn, with performance artist Olwen Fouéré
You've doubtless read somewhere or another or heard someone say that our relationship to novels is much like our relationships to people (our relationships to their authors, living and dead, are a whole other thing). That may sound trite, but it has its degree of truth. In no case is it so true as in the case of Finnegan's Wake. In most cases James Joyce's last novel is like some celebrity academic, who jets constantly between, say, Paris and Berkeley, but never crosses our path. Others may have approached the great man at the podium after a lecture and tried to ask a private question, only to be
Port Authority, by Conor McPherson, with Billy Carter, Peter Maloney & James Russell, by the Irish Repertory Theatre, New York
There seemed something symbolic in the front doors and lobby of the DR2 Theatre, temporary home of the Irish Repertory Theatre. As one walks in off the street, one finds a shallow vestibule followed by another shallow space occupied by the ticket office and the concession stand, liberally stocked with alcohol, as it should be in an Irish theater, after two or three steps, a small waiting room, then down a short black corridor into the auditorium. I don't think I've had quite that sense of openness and accessibility before in entering a theater. Irish theater is everywhere, and, apart from being a powerful force simply on the quality and scope of the work that's being done, it is open and accessible to all. New York continues to be in the thrall of the London stage, as always, and certainly not for the worse, but when London comes to these shores, as in last winter's visit of the Globe company, the event is highly publicized, tickets are expensive and hard to get, and the Broadway theaters claustrophobic, as New Yorkers crowd in to contemplate Shakespeare and his heirs as if it were the theatrical equivalent of the Crown Jewels. It seems like two different worlds.
Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, the Condé Nast Years, 1923-1937
This important exhibition of Edward Steichen's fashion and celebrity photography for Condé Nast, which will close soon in Toronto and continue on to Fort Lauderdale and Kansas City, emerged from an earlier, ambitious survey of his entire career, Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography, also organized by Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography and the Musée de Élysée. While researching that exhibition, the curators, William Ewing and Todd Brandow, discovered two thousand vintage prints from Steichen's years at Vogue and Vanity Fair in the Condé Nast Archive, where they were catalogued and preserved to museum standards. These had never been exhibited before and presented an opportunity not to be missed.
Richard Linklater’s Boyhood
When The Who named their landmark 1979 album The Kids Are Alright, it was an anthem of baby boomer self-confidence. Boomers were more than all right—they knew without being told that they would one day be in charge of everything. Great expectations formed a generational bond going back to the cradle. As applied to the insecure Gen X adults who populate Richard Linklater's widely acclaimed but elusive film Boyhood, the album would be called "Are the kids alright? How the fuck should I know? I can barely run my own life." Born between the early Sixties and early Eighties, Gen Xers shunned baby boomer values. They defined themselves by being cool with underachievement. Without knowing how it happened, some drifted like tourists inside their own lives.
Judith Schaechter: Dark Matter
We are mesmerized. The polished sheen of the glass radiates colors as intensely as jewels. A myriad of forms in kaleidoscopic transformation suggest at once flowers, sea urchins, snowflakes, or bacteria. Crystalline circles like flowers or alabaster Easter eggs multiply in extravagant exuberance. Tree branches, undulating snakes (or are they veins?) spread across the profusion.
On the Town – How To Do It Right
On The Town, Leonard Bernstein’s first musical, opened on Broadway on December 28, 1944, during WWII. The show began then and now with the Star Spangled Banner to honor country and the armed forces.
